The licensed game. 

To some, these words will bring about nostalgic memories of a bygone era when your favourite cartoon, TV show, band, blockbuster film or even advertisement would have a tie-in game released to cash in on the hype. Some of them were great, some of them were diabolical and some of them bared so little resemblance to their source material that you wondered whether or not the developers actually did their homework. 

Which brings us to the subject of this list, those licensed games that seem to be representative of their source material in name only. 

It could be that the developer's took massive liberties with the source material or just decided to slap a license on it at the last minute to boost sales, either way, this practice was incredibly common back when game development was much smaller and much, much cheaper - meaning games could be churned out in time for the next big release. Depending on who you ask, the decline of the licensed game is either a blessing or a blight for the modern gaming landscape but there's no denying that we're possibly being deprived of some truly strange outings for well known franchises. 

One of the most legendarily bad games to ever grace store shelves, Atari's adaptation of the beloved sci-fi classic certainly lives up to its reputation with its confusing gameplay and overall lack of polish but those aspects do tend to overshadow just how weird it actually is. 

Cobbled together in a few short weeks, this game puts players in the shoes of the titular alien, as he wanders around various landscapes looking for space-ship parts, whilst avoiding FBI agents that aim to capture him. That premise is already taking some liberties with the source material but the core gameplay loop or falling down numerous pits and then levitating back out via an extendable neck is undeniably wrong-headed.

That's essentially all that happens in E.T., you continually fall into pits - whether intentionally or not - and hope to discover ship parts. There's very little else going on here but that can be forgiven considering the game's infamously terrible production cycle. As it stands, Atari's E.T. will forever be remembered as a colossal misfire that's still being talked about to this day, not only for the many stories that have established its complex lore but due to it's truly baffling design.

Marc Smith

Contributor

UK based screenwriter, actor and one-half of the always-irreverent Kino Inferno podcast. Purveyor of cult cinema, survival horror games and low-rent slasher films.

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